We are happy to announce a new service, the OpenWrt Firmware Selector. It allows to easily find a firmware image for your device.
Feedback is welcome in this thread!
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Typed "4300", there are two firmwares for the same model:
One has platform ar71xx/generic, the other has ath79/generic. Is that how it should be, or should only a new platform be recommended? Or at least show a notification that ar71xx is deprecated.
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x86
No model found!
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edit: 20210101 mwarning has done an outstanding job acknowledging and addressing this feedback... and the issues below have been creatively and reasonably resolved...
several images with no information about where / how they should be used... ( is it ext4, squashfs, initramfs... pick one and try? )
@tmomas raised these issues but was largely ignored by @aparcar as many other people seem to have been...
as it stands for many devices...
is not almost a reality...
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C7 also showing ar71 builds.
I agree with @tmomas post on the list. While the idea of a firmware selector may seem interesting at first, it actually separates the image from the info. It can be useful provably for regular users who upgrade their systems regularly and know the process already, but then again those people are the least who need things to be made easier for them because they already know their way around the download files!
I think such effort could be (or could have been) best redirected to "modernising" the Wiki. It's a huge amount of work, considering the number and the variety of devices, but a progress in that direction is likely to be more helpful on the long run.
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Both targets are fine. 19.07.x is in the state where target ar71xx was renamed/changed to ath79, as it is a long process that will be concluded in the 2020 release.
For the end user this is very confusing. We could try to hide ar71xx devices if the ath79 equivalent exists...
This is probably a bug that got introduced by the latest rewrite. Thank you for reporting!
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It's an ongoing effort as the device data in OpenWrt needs to be fixed and the firmware selector needs to be able to differentiate more image types.
Working on it...
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Is the ath79 variant always the better choice? I recall discussions about there being issues with ath79 which was the impetus to extend the sunsetting of ar71xx.
Regardless, I do think duplicate entries in the list need at least some further info on what's different about them. I.e. One is deprecated, etc.
It seems like being able search on the marketing name of a device would be useful. If I type in AC1750 to find my TP-Link Archer C7 V2, it would be useful if that worked. It could show all of the matching devices, like the V1, V2, etc. which would help guide the user to understanding what their router's model name/version really was.
But for a user that doesn't know about the difference between the (marketing) model number of the front of the router and the real model on the sticker on the bottom, they would likely just type in AC1750, see nothing matching and decide that it's just not supported.
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That's probably not a totally bad thing. If a user doesn't know the model number of their router then they probably shouldn't do a risky task such as flashing the router it in the first place.
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I see the firmware selector as solution of a small problem. It also has the benefit, that is can be fully automated.
Of course there is also the ability of the firmware selector to create customized images via a build server (see chef.libremesh,org). But for me that is another topic. 
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That information would need to get into OpenWrt:
This would need to get added:
DEVICE_ALT0_VENDOR := TP-Link
DEVICE_ALT0_MODEL := AC1750
DEVICE_ALT0_VARIANT := v2
@bjonglez I just played with this, it seems the selector filters on OpenWrt version first, then on supported model. Yet the model input box is show first (to the left). So my instinct was to first type my model and then select snapshot.
The model input autocompletion suggests DIR-878 A1 is not supported, until I select the snapshot version in the version dropdown menu. The filter would be more intuitive if it worked the other way around:
- Allow user to input a device, whether it's supported in master or in a stable release
- Filter available releases (19.07, master, ...) depending on whether a device has stable releases or only master.
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Hello!
Checked the firmware for netgear_r6300-v2. The selector issues the firmware of the master version for 2020-12-07 06:34:56 sha256sum: 7a125fb0a7beb088852a77e76b41e076d612858ebb3737205277e214d3cebc85, while the latest firmware is in the repository Thu Dec 10 08:28:29 2020 sha256sum: ad5ee241cd93fe34ade6b8649301bab72c1ece28d9a0a66207333d8ea803ea5d.
Great job. Thank you very much.
For my device everything works fine
EDIT: found the source https://gitlab.com/openwrt/web/firmware-selector-openwrt-org
Is not the rest of OpenWrt on GitHub?
Great new tool! Worked well for my 3 devices today. Thanks!
The original project originated as https://github.com/mwarning/yet-another-firmware-selector and was then copied to https://gitlab.com/openwrt/web/firmware-selector-openwrt-org/. I renamed the former to openwrt-firmware-selector, since the previous name was a temporary thing.
Usually, both are kept in sync. But the github.com version does not have any tests.
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The platform name should be added in the list of search results.
Uwe
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This is really helpful. Thank you for doing this.